Although
these samples of 300-350 CEOs are representative of large,
publicly-traded, multinational US companies, they certainly aren’t very
representative of the average US company or the average US CEO. According to both the BLS and the Census Bureau,
there are more than 7 million private firms in the US, so the samples
of 300-350 firms for CEO pay represent only one of about every 21,500
private firms in the US, or about 1/200 of 1% of the total number of US
firms. And yet the AFL-CIO, Financial Times, AP, the WSJ and others
compare the average annual wages of hundreds of millions of full-time
employees working at the more than 7 million US companies to the CEO pay
of executives at only several hundred companies, which is hardly a fair
comparison.

We can get a more accurate and complete picture of
CEO compensation in the US by looking at wage data released recently by
the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its annual report on Occupational Employment and Wages for 2014.
The BLS report provides “employment and wage estimates by area and by
industry for wage and salary workers in 22 major occupational groups, 94
minor occupational groups, 458 broad occupations, and 821 detailed
occupations,” including the occupational category “chief executives.” In 2014, the BLS reports that the average pay for America’s 246,240 chief executives was only $180,700.
The CEOs of the 300-350 S&P 500 firms that supposedly represent
typical CEO compensation represent only one out of about every 820 firms
in the country (or 1/7 of 1%) that have a CEO at the head. The larger
sample of almost a quarter-million CEOs reported by the BLS gives us a
much better understanding of “average CEO compensation.”

For the
larger sample of CEOs reported by the BLS, their average pay of $180,700
last year was an increase of only 1.3% from the average CEO pay of
$178,400 in 2013. In contrast, the BLS reports that the average pay of
all workers increased by 1.7% last year to $47,230 from $46,440 in 2013.
That’s right, the average worker last year saw an increase in
their pay that was more than 30% greater than the increase in pay for
the average US CEO.

And the “CEO-to-worker pay ratio” for the average CEO compared to the average worker was only 3.83 times last year
(see chart above), nowhere close to the pay ratio of 331X reported by
the AFL-CIO using the 350 highest-paid CEOs in the country. Call it a “statistical falsehood-to-truth ratio” of 87-to-1 for the AFL-CIO’s exaggerated, bogus ratio.

Our practical application of arithmetic and statistics for the day. Why do our friends on the left trumpet the false number? Because it advances their agenda. They have to lie to advance their agenda.

Update, 10/1/15: Let's remember that the president of Planned Parenthood, a so-called non-profit that profits from the selling of babies' body parts, makes over half a million dollars a year, which is almost 3x the average American CEO pay.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

I can't speak for the English standards, only the math standards. Those aren't as good or as rigorous as what California gave up, and the strongly implied suggestion that so-called discovery learning is the approved way to "teach" isn't so great, either.

Like Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, the EPA’s regulatory assault on energy production, Obama’s anti-suburban moves, American policy in the Middle East and other fundamental transformations, Common Core is so big and sprawling a change that it’s often tough to see it whole. That problem has just been solved by Drilling through the Core, a book that’s bound to become the go to handbook of the Common Core’s opponents.

Drilling through the Core is a collection of essays by the most informed and prominent critics of the Common Core, including Sandra Stotsky, Ze’ev Wurman, William Evers, and R. James Milgram. It includes a wonderful treatment of the Founders’ views on the study of history by James Madison biographer Ralph Ketcham.

But what sets the book apart is the 80 page introduction by Peter Wood. Calmly and with crystal clarity, Wood explains and connects nearly every aspect of the battle. It’s all here, from the most basic explanation of what Common Core is, to the history, the major arguments for and against, and so much more. The controversies over both the English and math standards are explained; the major players in the public battle are identified; the battle over Gates Foundation’s role is anatomized; the roles of the tests and the testing consortia are reviewed; concerns over data-mining and privacy are laid out; the dumbing-down effect on the college curriculum is explained; as is the role of the Obama administration and the teachers unions.

What’s the bottom line? At least three things are clear. First, sentiment is highly sensitive to how the question is asked. Depending on which of the above questions one selects, it’s possible to argue that the public supports the Common Core by more than two to one or that it opposes it by more than two to one. This should remind us to take any particular set of poll results with more than a few grains of salt.

Second, support for the Common Core remains positive but exhibits a clear downward trend.

Like Obamacare, it will get even less popular as people learn more about it.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Go back, for a moment, nearly 30 years. In March 1987, Margaret Thatcher
visited Mikhail Gorbachev, the reforming leader of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, in Moscow. Sitting in the Kremlin, the two argued
for hours. At one point, Mr. Gorbachev accused Mrs. Thatcher of leading
the party of the “haves” and of fooling the people about who really
controlled the levers of power. The Iron Lady had an answer: “I
explained,” she wrote in her memoirs, “that what I was trying to do was
create a society of ‘haves,’ not a class of them.”

Sunday, September 27, 2015

I watched Maze Runner several months ago and genuinely liked it. It was yet another "teens fight to save the world" story, the first in a series, but it was still quite good. I considered it a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Cube (which, if you haven't seen, is a thriller).

Today I watched the second installment, Scorch Trials. It was a cross between 28 Days Later and Hunger Games Part 2. Not as good as Maze Runner, which is to be expected, but not a bad movie.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

A few months ago I was contacted via email and asked to review Straight A's Are Not Enough by Judy Fishel. I agreed to do so, received the book, and started reading. The real world intruded so I didn't finish the book until today, but I'll tell you right now, I liked it.

Subtitled Breakthroughs in Learning for College Students, the book's purpose is clear. The thesis is offered in the preface: "(l)earning is more important than grades." And at that point it's necessary to take a detour.

The author believes that too many students are either more interested in a diploma than in an education, and hence focus on short-term grades rather than on long-term knowledge, or else don't know how to learn beyond passing tests and getting grades. Teaching mostly seniors in high school, I have to concur with that, but I can't dump that solely on my students because I was that way, too. And we can't really fault students for being like that, as they're just responding to the rules of the game as we've taught them. Oh, I wanted the education, and I'd have been happy to remember everything I ever learned, but I was too focused on grades to make that happen. It's only now, decades into adulthood and well-settled into my life, that I now put so much effort into my master's classes.

But I don't kid myself, I still want the grades. And that's OK; look again at the title of the book. Straight A's are perfectly fine, but they're not enough. I finally want more.

Straight A's Are Not Enough is organized into 23 chapters covering topics as varied as how we learn, goal setting, time management, note taking, effective writing, organization, reading, research, memory, etc. Reading each chapter I was impressed at how organized the author herself is, presenting the material in a logical, engaging manner. What's somewhat entertaining for me, though, is the list of "strategies" in each chapter--101 of them in all, each with steps to follow! There's no way a student could follow every step of every strategy--they'd have no time for their coursework!--but these strategies serve as eye-openers and signposts for effective learning. Just as an example, let's take a look at the strategies from Chapter 9, Take Notes You'll Want To Study:

Despite their generic names, what I like about Fishel's strategies is that they're real, concrete strategies that anyone can follow. They're not, for example, like the following strategy for making money in the stock market: "buy low, sell high." How do you know when the price is low, how do you know when it's high? The steps should be common sense but are stated outright nonetheless. Here, for example, are just the first two steps of Strategy 9.2, with explanatory details:

Step 1: If you have a cell phone, turn it off and put it away. Avoid distractions.
Step 2: Stay awake, alert, and focused. It helps to sit near the front where you can see and hear the professor better and where he or she will see you. Don't sit by friends who will whisper to you, write notes, or otherwise distract you.

Again, those are obviously "duh" statements, but they're good, practical advice. The strategies for verbal and visual organization are very good, as are the suggestions for time management.

Besides the strategies and their associated steps, there are morsels of wisdom spread throughout the book:

"Learning is more important than grades."

"...(S)tudents often use study time to read their assignments and then think they're finished. This is part of the reason they learn so little and forget it so quickly."

"Learning involves far more than memorizing facts."

"When you were younger, your teachers and parents enforced discipline. They set goals for you and made sure you did the necessary work to reach them. In college, you must set your own goals and be self disciplined."

"A person who is not resilient sees mistakes and poor results as an indication that they are failures."

"People who aren't able to concentrate have not disciplined their minds...Several studies have reached the obvious conclusion that students who attempt to multitask during classes or while 'studying' learn less and make significantly lower grades."

"If you are in college, we can assume you had some of the best learning skills in your high school. But that doesn't mean that your skills are adequate for college."

"Just as students often read without much thought, too many students look at an essay question and start writing before thinking about what to say."

"If you don't know what you want to achieve in your presentation, your audience never will."

You get the idea.

Fishel's point comes through loud and clear--if you're going to spend 4 years and many tens of thousands of dollars to get a bachelor's degree, why not come out of that process with an education, too? She describes 4 types of learners (she's very big into lists!): shallow learners, who just want to complete an assignment; strategic learners, who work for grades; deep learners, who want to understand basic concepts; and intentional learners, who choose which type of learner they're going to be in accordance with their goals. She notes on p. 30 that "students using the shallow and strategic approaches are both extrinsically motivated...Students using both the deep and intentional approaches to learning are intrinsically motivated. Their reward is learning itself, not the grades." I agree.

I'm obviously a big fan of this book. It's opened my eyes to how I myself can be a better student; I'm going to keep it in my classroom so my students can take a read.

Full disclosure: the book was sent to me free of charge with the understanding that I would post a review of it. I have received no payment of any kind, and this review is entirely my own with no influence from any other person or group.

Friday, September 25, 2015

I've come up with a new saying: don't become the peacock. Here's the background:

Last Sunday evening my sister, a realtor, held an event at a local zoo. The Bacon Mania food truck was there, as well as an ice cream vendor. I'm sure a fun time was had by all--well, almost all.

One of the bear enclosures doesn't have a "roof", just a very tall fence around it. I noticed the peacocks like to sit up on the top of the fence and survey the area. Well, it was feeding time for the bears, so the zookeepers put some bear kibble into the enclosure. One of the peacocks decided to fly down and eat some of the bear food. In short order it became bear food. By the time I got over to the bear enclosure there was nothing left but a few bones and a scattering of feathers.

Don't become the peacock. It's a versatile saying, useful in many situations :)

Normal, rational, real people recognize that, as in the Kenny Rogers song, "sometimes you gotta fight when you're a man." There are some things worth fighting for, and defending the helpless is probably on the top of the "when violence is authorized" list--except at government education centers like this one in sunny California:

A California teenager who rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully has been kicked off the football team.

The high school junior was hailed as a hero for intervening after he saw the 'visually impaired' student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

Footage, filmed by a bystander, shows the teen knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch to stop the attack.

I understand the rescuer has been both kicked off the football team and suspended from school. Our schools are supposed to be oases of "tolerance", but "zero tolerance" policies rule the day.

Has this made CNN yet? It hadn't when last I looked.

Anyway, I find the pithiness of this comment refreshing:

'The day you punish people who protect the helpless is the day you've lost humanity. Don't be STUPID!'

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Passed in 1974, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is an
unwieldy piece of legislation affecting all institutions that receive
funding from the Department of Education. Although it has been amended
over the years, the law’s bottom line remains: “Once a student reaches
18 years of age or attends a postsecondary institution, he or she
becomes an ‘eligible student’ and all rights under FERPA transfer from
the parent to the student.”

This essentially means that you have
no right, as a parent, to know what or how your children are doing in
school. They can binge-watch True Detective rather than attend
classes, never disclose their grades, maybe become seriously anxious or
depressed, and you have to take their word for it when they say
“everything’s fine.”

So if these college students are adults, free and clear of their parents in these matters--so much so that parents can't even know how they're doing in school--how can it possibly make sense to expect the parents to pay for school, and/or to include parental income in financial aid calculations? Either parents are a part of the "team", or they're not. It seems not just wrong-headed but wrong to expect them to pony up the cash but otherwise be completely left out of the loop.

I have a hard enough time with Euclidean geometry. Especially in my current class, wherein we're proving a number of Euclid's propositions, I can't keep track of them in order, which means I don't know "what I'm allowed to know" and/or use for each proposition; for example, I can't use Proposition 32 to prove Proposition 29. It's driving me nuts.

But at least Euclidean geometry makes some sense to me. It "exists" in the same world I do. Non-Euclidean geometry is just insane. I can't make heads or tails of it.

Last night I was working on a non-Euclidean proof--I had to show that the summit angles of saccheri quadrilaterals are equal. Can I use the "fact" that diagonals or rectangles are equal, or not? Am I "allowed" to know that for this proof, or not? If so, the proof is trivial. If not... I punted, gave it up for the night.

This morning I was thinking about someone I used to know who died yesterday--coincidentally, a former geometry teacher. Out of nowhere the proof jumped into my mind, I'll give it a shot when I get home this afternoon. I think I can do it without assuming the diagonals are equal (I should be able to conclude they are using congruent triangles).

I'm reminded of a time 33 years ago, when I was first taking calculus. I beat my head against the wall and did my homework by following the example problems in the book without understanding what I was doing. This went on for a few weeks, I'd never not understood a subject before. It was a most disconcerting feeling. One night, though, I went to bed, not even thinking about calculus, and when I woke up it all just made sense to me. I have no idea how.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Debates can raise intense emotions, but that doesn’t mean that we should demand ideological conformity because people are made uncomfortable. As members of a university community, we always have the right to respond with our own opinions, but there is no right not to be offended. We certainly have no right to harass people because we don’t like their views. Censorship diminishes true diversity of thinking; vigorous debate enlivens and instructs.

Activists at Wesleyan have pushed the university to defund the Argus,
the school’s main newspaper, in response to a commentary that
questioned the tactics of the Black Lives Matter movement. The piece in
question suggested that the BLM movement was responsible for cop
killings, and questioned whether its tactics were actually effective in
creating change. Campus activists, in turn, started a petition to defund
the paper, which was signed by some 170 students—not a large number,
even on a campus of 2,900 undergraduates, but still concerning. I am not
disappointed that students have reacted, forcefully, in this way. I am
disappointed in how they have reacted, and how much campus life
have changed there since my childhood—a change the reflects a broader
evolution of college politics that troubles so many...

Today’s Wesleyan students could have reacted to the piece in question by writing a response in the Argus.
They could have started their own radical newspaper. They could have
leafleted, or invited speakers, or used any other means to respond with
better, more enlightened speech. By going straight to authority, they
have instead embraced establishment power and asked it to be part of a
liberatory struggle. That is folly. Institutions like Wesleyan may be
made up of radicals, but they are by their nature conservative entities;
that’s the nature of self-protective institutions.

This line struck a chord with me:

The fact that Wesleyan students so often advocate egalitarian politics
while embodying privilege in their behavior does not indicate
existential hypocrisy on their part. It simply illustrates the fact that
many college students are still too young to meaningfully connect their
politics to their own personal conduct.

Yep. To paraphrase Jaime Escalante in Stand And Deliver, "It's not that they're stupid, they just don't know anything."

The Faculty Senate at American University has passed a resolution
affirming the importance of academic freedom and questioning the use of
"trigger warnings" that alert students to books or other materials that
may be offensive or upsetting to them. The resolution was not prompted
by an incident at AU, but concerns -- especially among librarians --
that they might be asked in the future to provide such warnings.

Monday, September 21, 2015

One huge study conducted by Seymour Lipset, Stanley Rothman, and Neil
Nevitte involving thousands of faculty members and students at 140 U.S.
colleges and universities sought to determine the educational impact of
racial diversity. (An abstract and the entire study are available here.)

Subjects were asked to give their evaluation of the quality of
education at their institution, of the academic preparation and work
habits of their student body, and of the state of race relations on
their campus. Then separately, using government statistics, the
investigators, three outstanding scholars, determined the proportion of
black and other minority students at each institution involved.

If diversity has the great benefits claimed for it, institutions with
higher proportions of minority students should surely have been rated
more highly than those with lower proportions.

The reverse proved to be the case. Every benefit claimed for
campus diversity was contradicted by the results of this study.
Students, faculty and administrators all responded to increasing racial
diversity by registering increased dissatisfaction with the quality of education at their institution and the work ethic of their peers.

In every instance, a higher level of diversity was found to be
associated with less educational satisfaction and worse race relations
among students. Even if these results are wide of the mark, a study so
large and carefully devised seriously undermines the claim that the
educational benefits of racial diversity are “compelling.” They are very
probably illusory.

A study out of Denver’s Diversity Symposium has found the only way for
people to extinguish racism in their own souls is to become experts at
identifying racism in others...

When asked by one reporter if this would simply cause more negative
feelings and conflict, and bring about a greater divide, the Doctor
said, “It’s up to each individual to overcome racism in his or her own
life. Obviously the more a person has been corrupted and defiled by this
hideous cancer, the harder they will have to strive in order to
recognize their disease in others, and thus rid themselves of the malady
which afflicts them. They are essentially killing two birds with one
stone. Eradicating racism in their own lives while also spreading
awareness so that others may tackle the issue on their own terms. An
issue which has poisoned our culture since the dawn of man.”

What's scary is that I can't tell if this latter article is satire or not.

Scott Walker announced Monday he is dropping out of the GOP presidential race.

The
Wisconsin governor entered the primary in July as a front-runner in
Iowa and a darling of both the conservative base and powerful donors
after winning battles against public unions in his left-leaning home
state. But that promising start was quickly dashed after poor debate
performances dried up support from donors.

"Today,
I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field
in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the
top of the field. With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign
immediately," Walker said at a news conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

He encouraged other trailing Republican candidates to follow his path.

"I
encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing
the same so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates
who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current
front-runner," said Walker, referencing businessman Donald Trump. "This
is fundamentally important to the future of our party, and, more
important, the future of the country."

Sunday, September 20, 2015

One disagreement, #1 is just rude. It's at the very least impolite to fall asleep when others have a reasonable expectation of your attention, such as at work or in class or when company is sitting on your couch.

The second big reason to attend to the schooling of high-ability youngsters is a version of the familiar equity argument: these kids also deserve an education that meets their needs and enhances their futures, just like children with other distinctions and problems. They have their own legitimate claim on our conscience, our sense of fairness, our policy priorities, and our education budgets. What’s more, many of them also face such challenges as disability, poverty, ill-educated parents, non-English-speaking homes, and tough neighborhoods.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

In the master's class I'm currently taking, we've recently set out proving several of the propositions from Book 1 of Euclid's Elements. Here's what gets me:

I don't know what I'm "allowed" to know when doing these proofs. I can't imagine I'm supposed to memorize dozens of propositions, in order, so I know what I am and am not allowed to use on these proofs. I don't even know what straightedge/compass constructions I'm allowed to use, either. I'm dreading the upcoming test, I have no idea what I'm supposed to know and how I'm supposed to get that information.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

I started this blog in January of 2005, and this post marks my 10,000th post. In light of that rather significant milestone I present here a retrospective, a list of what I consider some of my best posts over the last almost-11 years.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How far the left has strayed from those ideals when we read articles like this one published in The Atlantic:

Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive
Many sociologists argue that ideologies claiming not to see race risk ignoring discrimination...

Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of colorblindness as an ideology. They argue that as the mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality have become more covert and obscure than they were during the era of open, legal segregation, the language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of colorblindness. But they fear that the refusal to take public note of race actually allows people to ignore manifestations of persistent discrimination.

What's a decent person to do? You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Last week, Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, suggested that even innocent students should be booted from campus if they were accused of sexual assault. According to Polis: "If there are 10 people
who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe
one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people."

So
one of the longstanding traditions of American law — that it is better
to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent — has now
been turned on its head. Under the Polis standard, it’s basically the
other way around.

According to Polis, it’s not such a big deal: "We’re
not talking depriving them of life and liberty, we’re talking about
their transfer to another university, for crying out loud," Polis said,
laughing off the idea that his suggestion would violate due process
rights. He is not alone in taking the due process rights of the accused
lightly, a widely-backed Democratic senate bill is just more circumspect.

Liberals, is it really worth it to you to disregard some of the greatest advancements in law in human history--due process, trial by a jury of your peers, innocent until proven guilty--just to score a few short-term political points?

I'm teaching my statistics classes the rudiments of Excel. Tomorrow they're going to type some data into Excel, sort it, graph it, etc. The data includes a list of the 50 states and, among other things, the cigarette tax and the adult smoking rate in each state. We're going to see if there's a relationship (we'll get to "correlation" next week) between those two variables.

Along with the data I included some Gallup information about smoking. Turns out California has the 2nd lowest rate of adult smokers (at least of cigarettes!) in the country, led only by Utah. I asked the classes if anyone was surprised to find California to be so far down that list, and few were. I then asked why Utah might have the lowest rate of smoking.

Silence.

I could tell from the looks on their faces that it wasn't an "I don't know" silence; no, it was an "I'm afraid to say" silence. In one class I called on a student and she was in obvious turmoil; "I can't say it" was all she could get out.

Everyone knew the likely answer. Utah has a large population of Mormons, who in general don't smoke. But my students were petrified to say that. They feared that the mere mention of that particular religion would brand them as some sort of "-ist" or "-phobe". I didn't even ask them to make a judgement call as to whether or not a religious prohibition against smoking is a net societal good or not, I merely asked them to identify a religious group. And they couldn't, or wouldn't, do it.

What are we teaching them?

Perhaps we're teaching them that foolishness like this, in which the only appropriate response is ridicule and mockery, is entirely justified and reasonable:

We have a major microagression situation at, get this, Oberlin College.

Apparently there was an intramural soccer match scheduled at the same
time as a Latin Heritage Club meeting. A White Male (uh oh) sent out an
email to a Hispanic girl noting that he'd like to have her at the
match, if she wasn't going to the Latin Club meeting.

He wrote the most racist sentence since Mein Kampf:

Hey, that talk looks pretty great, but on the off chance you
aren't going or would rather play futbol instead the club team wants to
go!!

The commenters on that blog post were correct in their reaction; anyone who gives any indication at all that La Niña (see what I did there?) is justified in her reaction is, IMNSHO, an idiot. Our society, though, our culture, has empowered a college student to--do what exactly? Act like a complete and total b***h because she can get away with it, and for no good reason? What is so wonderful about being a victim, anyway?

I don't like the crop we're sowing, I'm tired of reaping these diseased vegetables.

Update: This is the most entertaining response I saw on the latter topic:

This person is purportedly a college student at a well regarded
university. If she is falling apart when someone uses a Spanish word in
a manner she doesn't like, she is bound to be one of two things. A SJW
drain on the economy in the form of vexatious litigation to force
goodthink and punish badthink or become the embittered crazy person you
meet on the subway who takes everything as a personal slight/insult.
Neither is a good outcome.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Hey, Blake, here’s an idea: Maybe the reason people aren’t taking you seriously is because you seem weak, whiny, paranoid, and unable to handle anything without taking it so personally that you become too upset to function.

During the British Science Festival, a group of experts pondered whether or not some of the images we have sent into space might be too sexist and too white — which would clearly be sending the wrong message to any aliens out there.

Yes, seriously. Dr. Jill Stuart, considered an expert on the “politics” of space, expressed particular concern about a plaque on the 1972 Pioneer 10 spacecraft that featured a naked man and woman. “The plaque shows a man raising his hand in a very manly fashion while a woman stands behind him, appearing all meek and submissive,” Stuart said, according to an article in the Guardian.

“We really need to rethink that with any messages we are sending out now. Attitudes have changed so much in just 40 years,” she continued.

Things must be pretty good in this country or liberals wouldn't have to make up lies like "war on women", "rape culture", or "food insecurity", as examples:

The Agriculture Department announced this morning that 48 million Americans live
in “food insecure” households. Soon you’ll hear we’re suffering an
epidemic of hunger. While the federal government is already feeding more than 100 million Americans, we’ll be told that it just isn’t enough.

But it isn’t true. “Food insecurity” is a statistic designed to mislead. USDA defines food insecurity as being “uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food"...

USDA food security reports, by creating the illusion of a national
hunger epidemic, have helped propel a vast increase in federal food aid
in recent years. But that has been a dietary disaster across the land.

A Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics study concluded that “food insecure”
adults are far more likely to be obese than “food secure” adults —
indicating that a shortage of food is not the real health problem.
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “seven times as many (low-income) children are obese as are underweight.” President Obama proclaimed September as National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

There are certain laws--think child support and/or alimony--that are entirely too often used as a bludgeon, most often against men. Men don't talk to their friends about how much alimony they can get, for example. I find alimony and other such laws to be institutionalized sexism, and they'll only go away when enough men reap their benefits. So it is with anti-discrimination law, and look who's howling about it:

California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, a 1959 law named after a
powerful California politician, was a precursor to the federal 1964
Civil Rights Act. It prohibits businesses from discriminating against
folks based on specified attributes, currently including
sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability,
medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual
orientation. It is, by design, a very broad and flexible tool, and has
repeatedly been interpreted to protect groups and classes beyond those
listed explicitly. Defendants found liable can be ordered to pay
up to three times the actual damages the plaintiff suffers (and no less
than $4,000), and can be ordered to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees.
A losing plaintiff can't be ordered to pay a winning defendant's
attorney fees, with certain narrow disability-law exceptions.

Recently the Unruh Act provoked outrage. Why? Because this broad, flexible, and unilateral law was invoked creatively by the wrong people. Here's how The Mary Sue put it...

Go read the shrieks of indignation, read the sense of entitlement in their words. Equality sure does suck, doesn't it?

Here's the thing: if you only wake up to how broken the system is
when it's abused by one of your ideological enemies, you're a vapid
partisan hack. The legal system — including, but not "only" or "especially" civil rights laws
— is a tool of extortion, deceit, and thuggery... If you're only irritated by this when a group of Wrong People target a group of Right People, you're not to be taken seriously.

Public schools and roads in California bearing the names of
Confederate leaders will soon need to rebrand if Gov. Jerry Brown signs
Senate Bill 539.

The state Senate on Tuesday voted 31-2 to send
the measure to the governor’s desk. Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda,
introduced the bill this summer in the wake of Charleston church
massacre, arguing that California should not be honoring those who
nearly tore the country apart during the Civil War to protect slavery...

Among those institutions that would be affected are two elementary
schools in Southern California named for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The small coastal city of Fort Bragg, a former military outpost named
for an officer who later defected to the Confederacy, was exempted to ease passage of the bill.

I'm ready to go all in on this renaming craze, and I'm sure our friends on the left will join me. Let's recall that Berkeley was named after a slave-owning Anglican priest. Ohmigawd, we can't have a city with such a name. And how about all those Catholics--you know, those people who don't like abortion like good Californians do--we can't have cities named after them! Say good-bye to San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Santa Barbara, etc. And Sacramento--the capital of the state!--is named after a religious activity, a sacrament! Who were the natives around here, the Maidu? Let's find a good Maidu name for Sacramento.

You know what? My elementary school was Kohler Elementary. There's a street nearby also called Kohler. Hm, I don't know who Mr. (I'm assuming it's a Mr.) Kohler was, but I know that the school and the street were named after Camp Kohler, within the (former) confines of which both are found. I know what took place at Camp Kohler. Does it make sense to rename the school and the street?

How far do we want to take this? However far, does it take us in a good direction?

The California State Assembly voted Thursday to ban the state's schools
from using "Redskins" nicknames and mascots, a move that could soon make
it the first state to specifically prohibit schools from using the name
that continues to spark controversy across the nation.

Already the country's longest-lived monarch and the world's
oldest-serving sovereign, at approximately 5.30pm on September 9
Elizabeth will reach yet another milestone when she becomes Britain's
longest reigning monarch, breaking Victoria's record of 63 years, seven
months and two days on the throne.

She's a leader I've long admired. She has always demonstrated class and dignity--I admired her mother, too.

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

The United Nations body that oversees greenhouse gas reductions is
reeling from another cap-and-trade scandal that may have put 600 million
tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere -- roughly speaking,
the annual CO2 output of Canada or Britain -- while the emissions were
ostensibly suppressed, according to an independent study.

In the process, the fraudsters, largely in Russia and Ukraine, were
likely able to transfer credits for more than 400 million tons of their
apparently bogus greenhouse savings by April 2015 into Europe’s
commercial carbon trading system -- the largest in the world --thereby
undermining that continent’s ambitious carbon reduction achievements.

But ignore those for the moment and consider what often is presented as the dispositive argument in these cases: The United States, alone among advanced nations, fails to maintain policy x, where x represents any item from the progressive wish list, from so-called universal health insurance to censorship of unpopular political views to the abolition of capital punishment to, in this case, mandatory paid leave. “The United States, alone among advanced nations, clings to these atavistic ways,” the argument goes, “and must join the rest of the civilized world in x”…

The Left, full as it is of being who have for years received their news from Jon Stewart, believes the Right to be full of cartoonish Europe-haters who cannot believe that there is no NASCAR event in Florence. (They cannot believe that John O’Sullivan exists.) But if you flip over to, say, the Heritage Foundation’s annual ranking of countries on the metric of economic freedom—not only freedom from excessive taxation and regulation but freedom from corruption and political management—you see a lot of those wicked welfare states high up on the rankings: New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, and Denmark are all more highly rated than is the United States.

Conservatives sometimes turn the “no other country in the world” argument around: The government of no other economically advanced country presumes worldwide tax jurisdiction, as the United States government does, and no advanced country has a corporate tax as high as in the United States. If we are to go around the world cherry-picking policies from happy countries, we might pass over French paid-leave laws in favor of the Swiss capital-gains tax (generally 0.00 percent) or the Swiss national minimum wage (there isn’t one), or Finland’s very liberal (in the good sense of that word) education system, or Sweden’s free-trade regime and its financial-regulatory system. We’d have to make radical improvements on our federal balance sheet to get our public debt down to Norwegian levels. Our friends on the Left note that Germany has stronger labor unions than we do; we might also note that they have better unions, that IG Metall is a far less destructive and more collaborative organization than is the UAW. As our progressive friends celebrate Australia’s relatively high minimum wage, we might nod along and note that it excludes workers 21 years of age and younger, which is not unlike Charles Krauthammer’s proposal for a two-tiered minimum wage.

Where conservatives differ radically from progressives is in understanding that polities are not plastic, that culture and institutions and history and people matter, and that as attractive as we might find this or that aspect of another country’s governance, it takes the mind of a child to believe that Swiss or Singaporean policies will product Swiss or Singaporean results in New Jersey or Mississippi.

When confronted with a policy maintained by the United States alone, the progressive finds it very difficult to imagine that there might be a good reason for that, or that this might be desirable. The United States is practically alone in the world in its absolute commitment to freedom of speech, for example, something in which old-fashioned liberals once took pride but modern progressives detest and seek to change, pronouncing themselves scandalized by a Supreme Court decision declaring that a group of American citizens is entitled to show a film critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton without government permission and that the government may not ban the showing of films or the circulation of books and other media. G. K. Chesterton’s advice—economically summarized by John Kennedy as “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up”—is almost always relevant. It is, for example, why we still have a Bill of Rights, one of the greatest barriers in the history of political immuring, rather than conducting periodic referenda on individual liberties.

The decision is not without controversy and many parents have been
protesting, saying that it limits the choices qualified students may
have. The other side of the argument is that too many students who were
unprepared to take algebra in eighth grade were pushed to take it,
resulting in many students failing the course.

Of course it is a mistake to allow students to take algebra if they
are not mathematically prepared. Students need to have mastery of
fractions, percentages, decimals, ratios, and negative numbers and to be
able to solve a variety of word problems. But if a student is qualified
to take algebra in eighth grade and would do well in it, why not give
the student that choice?

But a growing trend among school districts these days is to limit (or
as in SFUSD, eliminate entirely) those choices under the guise that
Common Core doesn’t encourage acceleration. Districts prefer and think
it better that students take algebra starting in high school. Common
Core, however, defines four pathways that may be taken, one of which
allows for taking algebra earlier than ninth grade...

I recall a person from the school district office, who I will call
Sally, talking to a group of us math teachers in advance of a “math
night” to be held for parents to explain the District’s policy on
“compacted” math pathways. Sally described how the District was phasing
out the “accelerated math” in which qualified students in eighth grade —
and even some in seventh grade — were allowed to take Algebra 1.

She did say they were working on pathways for those students who may
be “really, truly” gifted and for whom algebra in seventh or eighth
grade may be appropriate. This was likely not going to sit well with
some parents, she said.

“There’s been a lot of parent pushback,” she sighed. “I imagine we’ll
have the usual Debbie Downers and Negative Nancies in the audience on
‘math night’. But I want to make two things clear: that there’s no shame
in taking Grade 8 math; under Common Core it’s equivalent to the
traditional Algebra 1.” (This is debatable based on what I’ve observed
in Grade 8 math classes) “And secondly, placement in eighth grade
Algebra 1 will be more difficult. Fewer students will qualify – Common
Core is very challenging.”

This all sounds plausible if you believe that Common Core gets into
“deeper learning”. But what it really means is that students will now
get a smattering of algebra in eighth grade, and the rest of it in
ninth, thus taking two years to do what used to be done in one – and
leaving some topics left out. Also, it raises the question that if
Common Core algebra is so much deeper than a traditional algebra course,
why is the traditional algebra course reserved for an elite corps of
eighth grade students?

Why, do you think, certain people want to limit the amount of math a student can take? A teacher I know once told me, without any trace of irony or joking, that he thinks an advantage of Common Core is that it will give all students a strong base of understanding and hence will help close the so-called achievement gap (this assumes that you believe the "critical thinking" offal that's tilled into soil by CC adherents). Retarding the achievement of the best math students is not the solution to the achievement gap, and it kind of frightens me that that isn't obvious to absolutely everyone, especially to a math teacher.

If you're at the top of your high school class, you have a couple choices for college:
1) you can challenge yourself at a top-tier university, surrounding yourself with other bright students, and where you might not be at the "top of the top" anymore, or
2) you can go to a "lesser" university and still be the cream that rises to the top.

Worrying about the angst of high-achieving students has become a
minor industry. “America’s culture of hyperachievement among the
affluent” has led to suicides, depression, and anxiety among college
students, suggested a July New York Times feature.
“These cultural dynamics of perfectionism and overindulgence have now
combined to create adolescents who are ultra-focused on success but
don’t know how to fail,” wrote Julie Scelfo. The rhetoric of concern barely conceals contemptuous disapproval.

In
this popular narrative, America’s best college students are making
themselves miserable trying to please pushy parents and grab lucrative
jobs. They’re soulless grinds -- the products of insensitive parenting
and a sick culture. This fable leaves no room for intellectual
enthusiasm or the pride of seeing oneself as smart and accomplished. It
assumes every activity these students pursue is instrumental, undertaken
merely to look good on an application for the next stage in their
upward climb. Their drive for success, it suggests, cloaks an ignoble
lust for fame or money. The moralism of this tale may flatter the
tellers, but the story itself largely misses a deeper underlying
struggle on elite campuses.

Intrigued by reports that my alma mater had initiated something called the Princeton Perspective Project,
which aims to reduce student stress by puncturing a reportedly
pervasive ideal of “effortless perfection,” I went to campus last April
to investigate. Had Princeton students stopped griping about how much
work they had and how little sleep they were getting...

This sample wasn’t random or necessarily representative of the range
of student experience. It was heavy on STEM majors and middle-class
strivers, light on athletes and wealthy prep school graduates. In these
ways, it resembled my own undergraduate circles, although with more
children of immigrants and more women, both groups whose numbers have
grown significantly in the three decades since I graduated. But
after repeatedly hearing the same themes, I came away with a better
sense of why students feel stressed at Princeton and most likely at
similar elite institutions.

Every January a great team loses the
Super Bowl. Every April three of the Final Four go down. And every
September, extraordinary students arrive at highly selective
universities only to discover that one out of every two really will wind
up in the bottom half of the freshman class --and one out of every five
in the bottom quintile...

Surrounded by distinguished peers, freshmen in particular may experience
a disorienting loss of identity. “It’s not just that you’re not the
biggest fish in the pond anymore. It’s that there are so many
other big fish,” said the chemical and biological engineering major, a
top science student in high school who found herself near the bottom of
the class at Princeton. Once
known as “the smart kid” or “the great musician,” students no longer
find themselves so distinctive. “When everyone’s a nerd, you’re like,
What am I?” she said...

The pain and struggles that generate so much public fretting are real.
But unless elite schools start reserving a quarter of their slots for
the unmotivated or unqualified, they’re also unavoidable. Wanting to
excel is not a character flaw, and shouldn’t be treated as one in the
guise of concern for students’ mental health. Ambitious students deserve
the same respect we accord ambitious athletes.

You can see that I snipped a lot of the article, specifically the parts wherein individual students were quoted. It was an interesting read.

Last year, lawmakers in the state of Minnesota imposed a vast new
anti-bullying bureaucracy in public schools. The argument for it
centered around the experience of gay and transgender students. The new
anti-bullying gestapo aspires to eliminate any possibility of such
students encountering criticism or the slightest hint of rejection. Of
course, in order to do that, those holding opposing viewpoints must be
criticized and rejected. Bullying remains. It’s just been
institutionalized and directed toward Christians and anyone who fails to
fully embrace homosexuality.

During the debate, a case was made that bullying points to a broader
systematic failure within public education. The problem, some argued, is
coercion. The entire system is based upon force. Students are forced to
attend. Taxpayers are forced to fund. Curriculum is imposed. There is
thus no way for students or parents to control their experience. You
can’t leave a bad school, or leave a school where you’re not being
treated well. You can’t create your own alternatives which are free of
any associations you find disruptive or undesirable.

The public education system has been designed from the ground up to punish individuality...

The root cause of school bullying and subsequent suicides is the public
school system itself. We have turned our children over to an institution
of collectivism which punishes people for being different.

I believe the argument to be overstated but still worthy of some consideration.

Not all of us will be mourning 9/11 victims and their families this
Friday on the 14th anniversary of the attacks. Hundreds of college kids
across the country will instead be taught to sympathize with the
terrorists.

That’s because their America-hating leftist professors are
systematically indoctrinating them into believing it’s all our fault,
that the US deserved punishment for “imperialism” — and the kids are too
young to remember or understand what really happened that horrific day.

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Education unions want Gov. Jerry Brown to embrace a late-session measure they hope would shield them from possibly debilitating financial effects of a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision...

Up against the clock in the Legislature, the labor groups are pushing for a bill that could give unions some time – a half-hour – to meet with employees to voice the benefits of union participation. That, some believe, could prevent workers from fully withdrawing from their ranks if the court rules against fair share fees.

I would agree with this if, in the spirit of fairness and equal time, CTEN (or some similar group) was given time to discuss why teachers might consider leaving the union.

The fact that they the unions are doing this, though, shows that they're not representative of their members and that they survive only through the "fair share" compulsion allowed by the state.

A high school English teacher who
claimed she was fired for making derogatory comments about her students
on her blog cannot sue her Pennsylvania school district for violating
her free speech rights, a divided federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

By
a 2-1 vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said
the Central Bucks School District's interest in educating its students
outweighed the First Amendment rights of Natalie Munroe, the fired
teacher.

Munroe
had disparaged students as "rude, disengaged, lazy whiners,"
"frightfully dim," "utterly loathsome," "The Queen of Drama" and
"A.I.R.H.E.A.D." in her blog, which was meant for a few friends but
shared on Facebook by a student who found it.

"Munroe's
various expressions of hostility and disgust against her students would
disrupt her duties as a high school teacher and the functioning of the
school district," Circuit Judge Robert Cowen wrote for the majority in a
55-page decision. "The speech at issue here was not protected because
the disruption diminished any legitimate interest in its expression."

Some won't believe it, but I absolutely watch what I say here on RotLC. I don't have a "right" to a teaching job, so I endeavor not to cross the line into unprofessionalism. I agree that the teacher above crossed the line.

Friday, September 04, 2015

If California is in such great economic shape--and the governor is always telling us how great things are--why does the state need new taxes to pay for the most basic state responsibilities?

More than two months after
calling a special session to address California's transportation funding
backlog, Gov. Jerry Brown has begun circulating a list of
administration proposals on how to pay for it, including a $65 annual
fee for drivers and increases in the diesel and gas taxes tied to
inflation.

A one-page
"transportation package" released Thursday calls for $3.6 billion a year
for repairs to California's crumbling transportation infrastructure.
The $65 charge would generate $2 billion a year, while $500 million
would come from fees charged to polluters and $100 million from
so-called "efficiencies" at Caltrans, which the independent state
legislative analyst has said is overstaffed.

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Ten months after California voters passed a ballot measure reducing
several drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, Gov.
Jerry Brown will be asked to consider a bill intended to soften one
impact of Proposition 47.

The state Senate on Thursday unanimously
approved Senate Bill 333, which would create a new felony for the
possession of date-rape drugs with the intent to commit a sexual
assault, sending it to Brown’s desk for a signature.

Simple
possession of date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol was reduced from a
wobbler – a crime that prosecutors can charge as either a misdemeanor or
a felony – to a misdemeanor under Proposition 47, raising concern among
advocates who argued it would weaken sexual assault laws.

Galgiani
originally sought to restore simple possession of the drugs to a
wobbler, but the version of her bill approved Thursday creates a new
felony that prosecutors could use under certain circumstances. The
Legislature’s analysis of the bill described one set of circumstances in
which prosecutors could use the proposed law: A suspect tells witnesses
he intends to drug someone and have sex with them, then administers the
drug but is stopped before an assault is attempted.

For whatever reason, the citizens voted for this law. Why are the legislature and governor overturning the will of the people? Where's the outcry?

There won't be one. "The people" got to feel good voting for what they wanted, no one really cares what the final tally is. They got to feel good, that's why they voted that way. Mission accomplished. Same with the $6 billion in stem cell research "the people" approved several years ago. Finger in the eye of religious conservatives, mission accomplished. Doesn't matter that I've yet to hear of one positive result from all that money.

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Here's a mathematical analysis of Master Yoda's mass and its effect on Luke's handstand:

Using the x-position values from the video along with the mass values
from my estimations, I get a Yoda-mass of -43.7 kg. Yes, that is a
negative mass...

No, Luke is not using the Force to hold Yoda up. In fact, even if Luke
was doing a handstand without Yoda pulling up, his center of mass would
be 12 cm to the right of his hand. He would tip over. Why is it that
Yoda using The Force and not Luke? Luke doesn’t know what he is doing.
He couldn’t even lift the X-wing (which happens right after this). He’s
just a student. Yoda was just helping Luke because he wanted him to feel
a small sense of accomplishment after his failure in the cave.

Officials at Washington State University have now announced that
taxpayer-funded professors on campus cannot proceed with their flagrant
attempts to censor politically-incorrect terms or require students with
white skin to “defer” to minority students.

“Over the weekend, we became aware that some faculty members, in the
interest of fostering a constructive climate for discussion, included
language in class syllabi that has been interpreted as abridging
students’ free speech rights,” Bernardo said. “We are working with these
faculty members to clarify, and in some cases modify, course policies
to ensure that students’ free speech rights are recognized and
protected.”

I don't care what their reasons or their intentions were. They're bullies and fascists, and should be treated as such. Good for WSU administration for "reminding" them of their responsibilities.

When you let your lawn go brown ("brown is the new green"), bad things can happen--and not just to your property values:

Under orders to slash water use amid a historic drought, cities and
towns across the state saved about 75 billion gallons in July, eclipsing
Gov. Jerry Brown's once-daunting order for a 25% reduction.

But,
in a paradox of conservation, water agencies say the unprecedented
savings — 31% in July over July 2013 — are causing or compounding a slew
of problems.

Sanitation districts are yanking tree roots out of
manholes and stepping up maintenance on their pipes to prevent corrosion
and the spread of odors. And when people use less potable water,
officials say, there's less wastewater available to recycle...

"It's unintended consequences," said George Tchobanoglous, a professor
of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. "We never thought
[conservation] was a bad thing. Every citizen thinks he or she is saving
mankind, and I'm sympathetic, but it just so happens that our basic
infrastructure was not designed with that in mind."

If women truly were at such a high risk (1 in 5) for being sexually assaulted in college, one wonders why any of them would ever set foot on a campus. If the campus kangaroo courts truly are set up against men, one wonders why any man would go to such a school.

To combat wrongful accusations of sexual assault on college campuses,
a pro-due process group is distributing flyers meant to prepare young
men for potential expulsion.

The organization, Families Advocating for Campus Equality has already
begun distributing the flyers on California campuses, where "yes means yes"
consent policies were adopted last year. The policies purport to make
clear what is and isn't consent, but make it impossible for accused
students to prove their innocence and in fact redefine normal human
actions as rape.

"This flyer was created by a small group of California mothers of
sons, including some whose sons have been falsely accused, to raise
awareness of the propensity of college and university disciplinary
panels to find male students guilty of sexual misconduct, often with no
evidence except the accuser's claim, and frequently in the presence of
tangible evidence to the contrary," said Cynthia Garrett, an attorney
and board member of FACE.

The flyer includes a large image of a text conversation between two
Occidental College students, identified as John Doe and Jane. Even
though texts between the two appeared to prove consent and police found no evidence to the contrary, John Doe was expelled from campus and is now suing the school.

Leave law enforcement to actual law enforcement. Schools have other things with which to concern themselves.

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

This morning I received an email from myself--one that I sent 5 years ago from futureme.org. I specifically sent it to be delivered today because of a problem I encountered 5 years ago.

See, my school district keeps track of all sorts of things about me, including when I need to get another tuberculosis test (every 4 years) and when I need to renew my teaching credential (every 5 years). What's interesting is that they tell me when I need to get a TB test but don't tell me when I need to renew my credential. They have people whose sole job it is to keep track of that, why can't they send me a reminder the way they do for the TB test? Heck, even the DMV sends me a reminder when it's time to renew my driver's license!

Lots and lots of us were down to just a few days left before our credentials expired when finally someone at the district told us. Yes, I understand it's my credential, yada yada, but again, the district has people whose sole job it is to track things like this. Anyway, I had to jump through hoops and get a temporary credential, or an extension, or something, and then get the real thing. This took a lot of time down at the district office after school and I didn't want to go through that again.

So I sent myself an email, to be delivered on September 1, 2015. And I received it this morning. So I just finished answering a bunch of questions online (no, I'm not being investigated for any felonies, and no, I've never been fired from teaching, etc), paid $102.50 with a credit card, and now I'm magically able to continue teaching for the next 5 years. I'm still curious what that money is actually for.... Five years ago the fee was about $70. Go figure.

As I enter my junior year at the University of Maryland, I'm armed with
the experience and confidence that were sorely lacking when I left home
to start my college career. After learning valuable lessons about
everything from friendship to food in the past few years, I feel
qualified to give a little advice. To all of the incoming freshmen who
want their college experience to be the best it can be, here's what I
wish I had known before heading off for the first time....

Go read the whole thing and, if you're in my generation, take that little stroll down memory lane!